Darla asked in HealthMental Health · 3 weeks ago

Is being a human a mental illness?

4 Answers

  • 3 weeks ago
    Favorite Answer

    When God or nature gives a living thing a trait, it often comes with advantages and disadvantages. Unlike animals in general, human beings are born with very little knowledge, so  they need years and years of teaching. Horses are born knowing how to walk. An insect starts life knowing all it needs to know. All a human baby knows is to grab things the baby likes and avoid nasty things. Some people stick with those primitive values all their lives, and it's the source of a lot of misery for themselves and others. We need philosophy or religion to go beyond the primitive values.

    Human intelligence has given us technology and civilization, which is good in some ways but bad in other ways. Pollution is an example. Another is that our genes are the same as those of prehistoric humans who lived in caves. A baby born today is the same as a Stone Age baby. People in underdeveloped countries have less depression than people in developed countries. In fact, people in hunter-gatherer tribes don't seem to get depressed at all, despite the fact that their lives are very hard. A psychologist at the Univ of Kansas, Steve Ilardi, has written a book about this. If you go to Metapsychology, you can read a psychologist's review of this book ("a splendid book"). 

  • Anonymous
    3 weeks ago


  • k w
    Lv 7
    3 weeks ago

    well....an explanation is forthcoming, sorta......

  • Anonymous
    3 weeks ago

    If by this question you’re asking whether having “human” qualities of a good type such as sensitivity, compassion, empathy and so forth constitute “mental illness”, I would say “no”.  It’s the people who don’t have any of those things that might be considered “mentally ill.” If “mental illness” exists at all. I actually think most of what is considered “mental illness” is actually spiritual impoverishment.  It’s also a very political thing which in some countries has been used to punish people, like they did in the old Soviet Union with political ‘dissidents’. They would send them to the Gulag and force psychiatric drugs into them under the pretense that they were “mentally ill” Because they held views contrary to the State’s  indoctrination and therefore needed to be “reprogrammed”. So “mental illness” can be very political as well. And also socio-economic...if you’re poor and have no power in a society and exhibit ‘anti-social’ behavior, you’re more likely to be labeled “mentally ill” than somebody like Donald Trump for example. His power, prestige and wealth protects him from being forced into a mental hospital. Which is probably where he belongs. But that usually only happens to poor people who don’t have powerful allies 

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